Data Management: Sample Text

Sample Text

When writing your data management plan, you don't have to reinvent the wheel.
This section contains sample text for the different sections of a data management plan,
which you can use as inspiration and modify to fit your particular project.
In addition, the Sample NSF Data Management Plans
collected by UC San Diego can provide a lot of guidance on wording and structure.

Metadata Standards and Creation

Geospatial
We will use the FGDC metadata scheme to organize and describe the data. This standard for geospatial data is widely adopted by researchers in the field of geography as well as anyone using GIS. We will work with University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries to create a metadata template that captures each sample's metadata and that conforms to the data submission requirement of the USGS repository.

Geospatial
We will use the North American Profile (NAP) of ISO 19115: Geographic Information - Metadata standard to organize and describe the data. This standard for geospatial data is widely adopted by researchers in the field of geography as well as anyone using GIS. We will work with University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries to create a metadata template that captures each sample's metadata and that conforms to the data submission requirement of the USGS repository.

Biosciences
We will utilize the Darwin Core metadata scheme. These standards for biodiversity data are widely adopted by evolutionary biologists and ecologists. Each specimen is assigned a unique identifier,[Insert Example Here]. We will work with an expert from University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries to create a metadata template that captures each specimen’s metadata and that conforms to the data submission requirements of the[Insert Name of Repository] and other relevant museums/repositories.

Access to Published Research

Using Institutional repository
Any publications or presentations related to this work will be archived and made publicly accessible via University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s Digital Commons (http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/), an open access repository. Per University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries' policies, copyrighted journal articles and conference proceedings will be published via Digital Commons upon receiving the appropriate permission from the original publisher.

Using Disciplinary repository
To increase access to the published research that has been funded, the research collaborators will deposit peer-reviewed or pre-print manuscripts (with linked supporting data where possible) in the arXiv (http://arxiv.org/), an archive for electronic preprints of scientific papers in the fields of mathematics, physics, astronomy, computer science, quantitative biology and statistics, which can be accessed online.

Using Disciplinary repository
To increase access to the published research that has been funded, the research collaborators may want to deposit peer-reviewed or pre-print manuscripts (with linked supporting data where possible) in a subject repository. The DataBib (http://databib.org/), is a searchable catalog / registry / directory / bibliography of research data repositories that are available online.

Using both types of repositories
Research collaborators will deposit peer-reviewed manuscripts (with linked supporting datasets) in relevant open-access data repositories. If publications appear in peer-reviewed journals who participate in DRYAD (http://datadryad.org/), an international repository of data underlying peer-reviewed articles, Dryad will host and preserve these datasets. In other cases, the authors will make their publications and presentations accessible in institutional and/or disciplinary digital repositories, including University of Nebraska-Lincoln's Digital Commons http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/

Using both types of repositories
Research collaborators will deposit publications and presentations (with linked supporting datasets) in relevant open-access institutional and/or disciplinary digital repositories, including University of Nebraska-Lincoln's Digital Commons (http://digitalcommon.unl.edu). The researchers will review datasets for long-term preservation and dissemination via deposit in the international DRYAD data repository (http://datadryad.org/), which hosts data associated with any published article in the biosciences.

Data Storage, Backup and Preservation

Archiving with institutional data repository
The data created by this project will be added to the university's data repository (University of Nebraska-LincolnDR), managed by the Libraries and campus IT, for dissemination and long-term curation. The University of Nebraska-LincolnDR (Dell Object Storage Platform) is a server dedicating to scalable and affordable fixed-content storage of data. The researchers will work with Information Systems to assess our data storage needs and provide cost options for short and long term storage of the data created in this project. The University of Nebraska-LincolnDR provides backups, migration, remote access, and other security-based services that ensure the data are appropriately archived for the life of the project and beyond the project if necessary.

Archiving with institutional data repository
Approximately [insert amount] images will be created over the 5 year course of this research project. For preservation purposes, the images will be stored as un-compressed 800 dpi TIFF files. For web accessibility the images will be converted to low resolution GIF files for web accessibility. The TIFF headers will be embedded with the appropriate technical and administrative metadata. The team will develop a file-naming convention that will ensure that the date and order in which the images where captured is retained. The researchers intend to retain these images beyond the life of this project so the entire collection (low resolution GIFs) will be deposited in the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Image and Multimedia Collections Repository (http://contentdm.unl.edu/) while the high resolution TIFFs will be deposited in the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Data Repository for long-term archiving. The archive’s terms of service include regular checks of data integrity. The libraries will archive the online collection and make the images available to authorized users.

Data Sharing

Non-sensitive data
All data produced during this research is not confidential or private so it will be freely available to the public under the terms of the Open Database License (http://www.opendatacommons.org/licenses/odbl/). Users may share, create, and/or adapt these data. We request attribution and sharing by users under the terms of the OdBL and redistribution without digital restriction measures.